Saturday, July 25, 2015

Why President Obama Has Miscalculated The Middle East

Niall Fergusen, WSJ: The Iran Deal and the ‘Problem of Conjecture’

Obama is hoping that the nuclear pact will lead to equilibrium in the Middle East. All the evidence points the other way.

In making the case for his nuclear-arms-control deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran, President Obama has confronted Congress with a stark choice. “There really are only two alternatives here,” he declared at last week’s press conference. “Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is resolved diplomatically through a negotiation or it’s resolved through force, through war.”

This binary argument is so central to his administration’s case that the president provided a second formulation: Without the deal, he said, “we risk even more war in the Middle East, and other countries in the region would feel compelled to pursue their own nuclear programs, threatening a nuclear arms race in the most volatile region in the world.”

The president insists that the Iran deal is tightly focused on “making sure” that the Iranians “don’t have a bomb.” It is not, he says, “contingent on Iran changing its behavior” in any other respect—notably the funding of proxy armies and terrorist organizations throughout the Middle East. “The incremental additional money that they’ve got to try to destabilize the region,” according to Mr. Obama, is not “more important than preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.”

WNU Editor:As an amateur historian I have always enjoyed historian Niall Fergusen's use of history in explaining current international trends/events. In this post he does not disappoint .... extrapolating correctly (in my opinion) Kissinger, the buildup of the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal, and the pre-World War II era in explaining the current Iranian nuclear deal .... and why it will fail while the regions conflicts and wars continue to spread. To put it all in perspective ....

.... According to the International Institute of Strategic Studies’ Armed Conflict Database, total fatalities due to armed conflict increased world-wide by a factor of roughly four between 2010 and 2014. The Middle East and North Africa accounted for more than 70% of the increase.

So much for President Obama's outreach, policies, and initiatives in the region .... starting with his Cairo speech in 2009.

3 comments:

Black Knight said...

It's obvious from your consistent postings on this that you do not approve of President Obama and his foreign policy. What would you have liked to see the US do in the Middle East in the alternative?

War News Updates Editor said...

Good point Black Knight. I will be posting a response by tomorrow in a special post.

Unknown said...

Obama would not put out the small fires, because he said others had to learn how to be firemen 1st.

That and legalistic reason saying we could not go after Kony due to the law.

Could not have Obama capture Kony and taught the other how to be 'firemen' at the same time.

It seems to me that the federal government withholds money such as highway funds until state boost the drinking age to 21. They withhold assistance from Nigeria because of abuses (they are awfully selective in that regard).


Kony looks like he is down and out. Kony is 2.0 of the LRA. If Obama and company f_ck around a little more, we might get LRA 3.0 (change of leadership or something) and it might be worse. We know it until (& If) it happens because we will have our plate full with Boko Haram and others.

What is the rule of thumb? Small fire double every 3 minutes. It is only an analogy and all analogies fall aprat if pushed too far. But it is been 3 years since there was this being outpouring of emotes and handwringing, Kony2012. and now nothing.

Sort of like the #Hashtag campaign by Michelle Obama. Some of the girls rescue themselves. Obama sure did not do it. Obama did nothing or very little about Boko Haram form 2009 to 2015.

Why worry about being the world policemen and demanding they help themselves when our allies of 60+ years in Europe do not devote 4% of their budget to defense as required by the NATO treaty?

Obama is awfully persnickety dotting i's and crossing t's while the world is burning. Or maybe that is the point. The world needs to burn according to Obama or he is just that fooking stupid!